Need suggestions for a Large Beginner group

[UrJac]

I have an interesting problem and welcome all suggestions:

A family party is coming up and I've been shanghaied into running a game for my nieces and nephews and likely some of their parents.
I'm an experienced gamer but with limited GM experience; but don't worry about that, I'm good under pressure.
Here's the ask: I have no time to write an adventure of my own, so I need recommendations for a published adventure I can use. The players:
- Ages 13 - 19 (and a parent or two)
- ZERO role-playing experience but quite a few actors and LOT of enthusiasm
- a crowd: I may have eight of them who want in on this. Gods help me, maybe more.

So I'm looking for an adventure that's:
- Low level - maybe character levels up to 5
- Good role-playing opportunities
- benefits from a range of characters, so everyone needs to contribute
- Stand alone
- ~5 hours to play, all in one day
- Bonus: funny; Madcap hijinks would be well recieved

I plan to provide pre-gen characters which I can create if the Adventure doesn't have them, or enough of them. I'm willing to tweak an existing adventure to accommodate the larger number of players, within reason.

I'm giving serious thought to one of the We Be Goblins (as they are funny), but I think I'd prefer a more standard type adventure group. But sell me.

Thank you for any help.

[ckdragons]

Good luck! 8+ new players for only 5 hours of play, you'll be lucky to through two combats at low level.

My recommendation would be to start everyone a 1st level and run one of the Pathfinder Adventure modules that contain a single adventure. Though you're going to need to make some major changes to the encounters with such a large group.

[UrJac]

ckdragons wrote:

Good luck! 8+ new players for only 5 hours of play, you'll be lucky to through two combats at low level.

My recommendation would be to start everyone a 1st level and run one of the Pathfinder Adventure modules that contain a single adventure. Though you're going to need to make some major changes to the encounters with such a large group.

Believe me, corners will be cut! They won't know any better. :-)

[Mark Hoover 330]

8 folks that don't know any better? Maybe more? Play the ogre with a pie scenario. An ogre has a pie. You have to take it from him. Comedy hijinx ensue.

Seriously, I don't know how much of a serious game you get with 8(+) folks in five hours. They don't know what any of the numbers mean and having never played anything before there's no point of reference.

Personally I had situation like this, years ago, but it was only for 5 kids. I ran Marvel Super Heroes instead. They'd all either read some comics or played Marvel vs Capcom so they knew the main characters. It was about half an hour of explaining what movement and attacking was, then 3.5 hours of smashing through New York on the trail of The Sinister Syndicate so they couldn't launch a weather control rocket into space!